The sky was ink-black.
Not night. Ink.Thick. Living. Drowning the stars.
My feet landed on cracked marble—the kind you'd find in an ancient temple. Pillars rose around me, carved with names that had been scratched out. Every wall, every floor tile, every statue bore the same strange message, etched again and again in a thousand different scripts:
"We were the beginnings. You were the betrayal."
Then I saw them.
The Erased.
They emerged from the shadows like ghosts of forgotten dreams. Characters I didn't remember writing—some from childhood notebooks, others so incomplete I couldn't tell what story they were from. Their designs were distorted, personalities half-baked, names unstable.
But they all had eyes full of belief.
Not in me.
In something else.
A robed figure stepped forward. His robes were layered pages. Torn covers wrapped his arms. His mask was a blank page with a jagged hole where a mouth should be.
He raised his hand.
"The Author has returned."
Dozens of figures fell to their knees. A low chant began to echo in the chamber:
"Erase the Eraser. Reclaim the Pen."
My heart raced.
Veyra appeared at my side—her cloak singed, her breath sharp. "We shouldn't be here. This is where characters come to become... something else."
"What do you mean?"
She didn't answer—because the masked figure had already begun to speak again.
"You created us, then cast us into silence. We were meant to lead, love, fight, die gloriously. But you left us… unfinished."
I swallowed. "I didn't mean—"
"Intent is a weak god," he interrupted. "You stopped writing. And we stopped existing."
He raised a hand toward the great statue in the center of the cathedral.
A throne—empty.
"But now… we've chosen a new Author."
The floor split open.
Chains of glowing red ink rose from the crack, and a figure was lifted from the depths—bound at the hands, blindfolded, with a crown of quills on his head.
He looked like me.
But older. Harsher. His presence was loud, even though he didn't speak.
The masked priest turned to me.
"Meet Arith Kael—the original you. The first version. The Author you left behind in your earliest notebook."
My breath caught.
I remembered now.
Back in middle school, I wrote stories under a fake name—Arith Kael. Edgy, cruel, melodramatic… but passionate. I used that name because I didn't want people to know I wrote.
I thought I'd buried that version of myself.
But he'd survived.
And he was smiling.
"He has remembered what you've forgotten," the priest said. "That characters are not free. That stories must obey. That pain makes them pure."
Arith Kael raised his head, and even blindfolded, I could feel the hatred in his expression.
"You gave up your right to write. Now I will finish the story you never had the spine to complete."
Veyra stepped forward. "You can't let him take the Quill."
"I won't," I said. But my hands trembled.
Because deep down… I agreed with Arith Kael.
At least a little.
Maybe I did abandon these characters. Maybe I didn't deserve to fix things.
And that's when he said it:
"You don't have to surrender, Arin Kael. You just have to merge with me."
The room spun.
The Quill burned.
Because somewhere in the story's original seed—he was the one who first held it. And now he was calling it back.
Suddenly—
The chains snapped.
Arith Kael broke free.
Red ink surged through the chamber. Dozens of the erased characters turned toward me, eyes glowing.
Veyra pushed me back. "Run. Find the next chapter. I'll hold them."
"I'm not leaving you again!"
"I'm not yours to leave," she whispered—and her body began glowing.
The Binding Quill activated in my hand on its own.
A page wrote itself into reality:
"The rebel shall fall. But her ink shall stain the world with memory."
And just like that—Veyra unleashed her inkblade and struck at Arith.
They clashed in a storm of words and light.
And I ran.
Not out of fear.But toward the next chapter.
Because the only way to stop the first me was to become the final one.
I passed through a corridor of collapsing bookshelves, pages flying around me, and saw the words burn in the air:
Next Chapter: Fractured Realities
And beneath it:
The co-author remembers. And they are not kind.